I have lectured to countless high school students on the ease of working with their intuition and their dreams. A favorite of students is a program I do on “Conscious Dreamplay”; a program that combines intuition with waking dreamwork.

On one occasion, I was lecturing to a group of high school seniors and was explaining how the subconscious mind can access virtually any insight through intuition and the use of symbolism. To demonstrate, I asked each student to take a plain piece of white paper and write out a question that they would like to have an answer to. After writing out their questions, I had them fold their paper in half, and then in half again, so that the question was hidden within a quarter-folded piece of paper.

Next, the students got into groups of five or six and put their questions together so that one student could shuffle the identically-appearing pieces of paper. When the questions were shuffled, I asked each student to select a piece of paper. No one knew which question he or she held. After everyone was holding a question, I had the students get quiet, focus on the piece of paper between their hands, and imagine the following for a few seconds each: a place, a wonderful person, and the wonderful person presenting them with an object.

When the imaginative reverie was over, I explained my belief that the subconscious mind already knew the answer to the question that each student held between her or his hands, and that the subconscious mind had actually provided a series of symbols during the reverie that could answer the question, much like a dream. I then invited the students to unfold their pieces of paper one at a time within their groups, read the question out loud, and then work with the group at interpreting the symbols seen in order to find an answer to the question written on the paper.

Even though much of the class had never worked with dreams or symbols before, everyone seemed amazed at the insights provided by the subconscious mind. One girl helped her questioner decide on a college major, another student got insights into the outcome of a court trial, a third admitted that she was as indifferent to her relationship with her boyfriend as he seemed to be with her. All these “answers” had come in the form of symbols, just as occurs in a dream.

When I asked if everyone felt that they had gotten an answer to the question, one of the football seniors raised his hand and stated that the exercise was “stupid and didn’t work.” I asked what his question had been and he said that he had written whether or not his best friend “will end up going to college in Florida?” The college was over a thousand miles away.

I asked the young woman who had been holding his question what she had seen. She replied that she had seen her best girlfriend and herself in a car, on their way to the high school. When I pointed out to the football player that his partner had seen her best girlfriend—just as his question was about his best friend—and that the image had shown them on the way to school—just as he had wondered about a particular college—the student seemed unimpressed.

I asked the young woman what object her friend had shown her in the image and she replied, “a piece of paper, like a letter of some kind.” I nodded, thinking that the paper probably symbolized the acceptance letter that the football player’s friend was waiting to receive. However, knowing that the connection was not likely to impress the male student, I asked the young woman the most practical question I could think of, “Where is your best friend going to college?”

Her face turned white, and she volunteered, “to Miami.”

The football player’s response was immediate, “All right man, you sold me!”

Hopefully, a day will come in the not-too-distant future when more and more individuals understand the ease with which they can access insights from their own subconscious mind – helping themselves and others in the process.